Barber was twenty-nine years old when he completed his violin concerto, a year after Arturo Toscanini's performances of the First Essay and Adagio for Strings that had catapulted him to fame. It was his first major commission, coming from Samuel Fels, soap manufacturer and a trustee at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, Barber's alma mater. (Barber later referred to the work in private correspondence as his "concerto del sapone," or "soap concerto.") Fels intended the concerto for his adopted son, Iso Briselli, a former child prodigy and a student of the celebrated Carl Flesch. Fels offered Barber $1000 dollars, half of which was paid in advance and the other half upon completion of the concerto. But things didn't quite work out between composer and violinist. Briselli raised objections to the last movement of the concerto and asked Barber to make some major changes, which he composer refused to do. As a result, Briselli he never played the work that was written for him.

In order to defend against charges that the concerto was unplayable, a young student at Curtis, Herbert Baumel, was asked to help. Based on an interview with Baumel made in 1984, Barbara Heyman, in her seminal biography of Barber, gives the following account of what happened:

One afternoon during the autumn of 1939, while Baumel was sitting in the commons room of the Curtis Institute of Music, [pianist] Ralph Berkowitz walked into the room and handed him a pencil manuscript of a violin part without telling him the name of the composer. He was told only that he had two hours in which to learn the music, that the "piece should be played very fast," and to return "dressed up" and ready to play before a few people. The private performance took place in the studio of Josef Hofmann, where the tension and solemnity of the occasion, as recalled by Baumel, suggested that much was at stake for Barber besides the financial aspects of the commission....Ralph Berkowitz accompanied Baumel, who produced dazzling evidence that the concerto was indeed playable at any tempo. There were "bravos" and the ritualistic tea and cookies. The verdict was that Barber was to be paid the full commission and Briselli had to relinquish his right to the first performance of the work. The trial was based on a performance of the incomplete third movement through rehearsal no. 6, ending abruptly at measure 94.

If the finale was given incomplete during Baumel's demonstration, then no one could get an idea of the concerto's difficulties, as part of the challenge lies in keeping the momentum going for the entire length of the movement. In fact, technical virtuosity is so strongly in evidence throughout the finale that some critics have seen little else in it. It has indeed been repeated again and again that the last movement is the weakest of the three. On closer look, however, the Presto turns out to be the most harmonically adventurous of the concerto's movements.

Without so much as a single measure of introduction, the solo violin begins the first movement with a tender melody, played over a gentle orchestral accompaniment. The atmosphere is idyllic, like a sunny summer afternoon in a beautiful garden. The first melody has repeatedly been called "Mozartian" in its purity and its perfect equilibrium, but even Mozart didn't eschew conflict and contrast as much as did Barber. Then, the clarinet introduces a second melody (somewhat faster-moving than the first but equally lyrical). A playful and animated, but brief violin passage completes the collection of themes: the three form a happy family whose bliss nothing and no one can perturb. It is interesting that the characteristic clarinet theme is taken over by the soloist only at the very end; this effect was saved for the movement's ethereal coda.

The idyll continues in the second-movement Andante. The solo oboe presents a long, and longing, melody, repeated by the cellos. The solo violin enters with more agitated material, leading to a cadenza, after which the violin takes over the opening melody. A brief fortissimo section flares up, before the movement ends on a calm and peaceful chord.

The first two movements were written in the summer of 1939, in Sils Maria in the beautiful Engadin Valley of Switzerland. Barber expected to finish the third movement in Europe as well, but, as Heyman writes, "his plans were interrupted....when at the end of August all Americans were warned to leave Europe because of the impending invasion of Poland by the Nazis."

Barber sailed home on September 2, the day after the invasion, and finished the concerto in the Poconos. It is hard to say whether there are any direct links between these circumstances and the concerto's third movement; after all, Barber had from the outset planned a finale with "ample opportunity to display the artist's technical powers." But the differences between the first two movements and the third go deeper than just an increase in virtuosity. The earlier idyll is definitely disrupted, and there are more musical surprises than ever before. For one thing, after two largely diatonic movements (concentrating on the seven notes of the major or minor scale), the language in the third is chromatic (making use of all twelve pitches in the tonal system). For another, there are some unexpected changes in the meter that throw off the patterns established at the beginning. Furthermore, Barber made the orchestration spicier by adding the snare drum, by ingeniously combining pizzicato (plucked) and arco (bow) string techniques, and by a more pointillistic use of the woodwind instruments. There is a powerful climax near the end, after which Barber cranks up the tempo even more, replacing triplets by sixteenth-notes for the frantic last measures of the concerto.

Notes By Peter Laki